


(I just want to have) a taste of a normal life

by Little_Firestar84



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Avengers (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Justice League Dark (Comics), Marvel (House of M)
Genre: Alternate Universe - House of M, Dimension Travel, Hawkeye is the new Green Arrow, One Shot, Resurrection, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 04:39:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16779763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Firestar84/pseuds/Little_Firestar84
Summary: When he came back to, Clint wonders if this maybe was the afterlife, or if that could have been all a dream – as far as he knew, he could have still been in New York, could have hit his head pretty hard while fighting the Krees.He just was damn sure he wasn’t in Genosha any longer, as the sky wasn’t filled any longer with Sentinels trying to kill him.





	(I just want to have) a taste of a normal life

Clint Barton had always had the feeling that something was amiss. He was well aware that it was something people often said, but he had assumed it to be just a saying, something to explain how one couldn’t quite accomplish what they truly wanted out of life. 

The moment Layla Miller had touched his forehead and opened his mind up to the vastness of his past, he finally understood it all – and how much, in the case of the people of his world, was true.

The first thing he remembered, was dying – thinking that he was facing an alien invasion, fighting the good fight for humanity’s survival as innocent bystanders become victim to a senseless and endless was between two alien races that just didn’t care, one way or another, about Earth.

But Layla opened their eyes up. They had been wrong – all of them had been manipulated, planted on a cosmic chessboard by an enemy that had walked among their ranks, called them friends. Family. 

_ Lovers. _

Wanda- he had loved her, would have killed, died for the Scarlet Witch. And yet, she had assumed them responsible for the loss of her children, and condemned her teammates to what she saw as a just fate. She had killed them, ruined their lives, all in the blink of an eye.

She had brought him back to life. Just to turn him into one of her father’s subjects, avassal in the a system where only mutants ruled, and humans were workforce, entertainment, slaves.

_ No more,  _ he told himself. 

He needed to know why. Needed to stop this- stop her – before it was too late.

Unknowingly to the other “Avengers” he went looking for Wanda, once landed on “her” Isle, and when he saw her, playing with her kids (fake, abominations, impossible),he simply threw the arrow in her back, as he was nothing more than a treacherous and scarred, frightened bastard, and then, he stood there., over her dying body, his fists clenched at his sides, looking at life slowly fading away from her green eyes.

And he cried. Like he had never done before – not even when he got to bury the love of his life.

(Thanks to Wanda, he got to do that _twice-_ once there, once here, in the abomination they’d come to call the House of M.) 

“We were friends, Wanda. I loved you. I’d kill for you!”

She sat up, and smiled at him, gently, as she was his mother. Condescending. 

“I know, Clint. I love you too.”

“Then why…” he readied another arrow,aiming this time at her heart – if she’ll not snap out of her craziness, he’ll kill her, this time once and for all. “Why did you kill me?”

But Wanda just shook her head, the smile still plastered to her features, as it was nothing, like he was muttering silly nonsense. “I brought you back, Clint. You are alive now. Again.”

His arms trembled as he pulled the string of his bow, the arrow pointing at her most vital organs covered but by a thin robe; but before he could hit his target, still smiling sweetly as a kind mother, Wanda waved her hand in the air. 

Clint Barton had been brought back to life. 

How, he was dead yet again.

***

He was enveloped by the thickest fog when he came back to his senses – and his first instinct was to think that this maybe was the afterlife, or that it could have been all a dream – as far as he knew, he could have still been in New York, could have hit his head pretty hard while fighting the Krees. 

(He had been to Hell once, hoping to save the Love of His Life – it didn’t work out – and it kinds of looked just like this.)

It was cold and moist and grey and all around him, Clint Barton could see only squalor and destruction. 

With the breath dying in his throat, he studied his surroundings , and maybe he didn’t know where he was right now, but he was damn sure he wasn’t in Genosha any longer (unless it was all a dream), as the sky isn’t filled any longer with Sentinels trying to kill the formerly known as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. 

A gust of wind penetrated, as cold as death, his bones, and he shivered in his shredded costume. Pages from a thorn newspaper wrapped around his legs, and Clint tentatively lifted the pages so that he could read them, have an idea of where he could be; it’s the front page of the Star City Gazette, a newspaper he had never heard of before, and it dated back to April, 12th..

** GREEN ARROW ARRESTED **

** MAJOR OLIVER QUEEN REVEALED TO BE THE MYSTERY VIGILANTE **

The article was accompanied by two pictures; a mugshot of the major, and a grainy image, probably from some low-quality surveillance camera, of this “Green Arrow”. The guy is just like him – a normal man with bow and arrows. Clintdidn’t know this guy, had never heard of him – he probably was another one of those minor super-heroes born after the Initiative – but he shook his head. He still had his own bow in hand, and he’d like to throw it away, because what did he got from being a damn super-hero? 

What good did it do to this Green Arrow man?

He’s alive. He should just treasure that. It should be enough. He should… reinvent himself. Become a normal person. Something he had never been. 

(The kid with the hearing aid. The son of the drunkard. The carnie. The Hero.)

He’s about to throw his bow and arrow, look for using his old carnie talents to find clothes and some money when he shivered yet again. It’s a different kind of cold though, coming seemingly from within his very bones. 

He swallowed, hard, and tentatively, he turned. There’s a woman at his back – tall and slim and long black shiny hair and with a long azure dress that made her look like some kind of apparition, or a mythological figure from an Arthurian Myth. 

He didn’t know why, but Clint Barton stood still, unable to take just one step to get away from this beautiful woman, who emanated an aura of power and danger like no one he had ever met before. 

“I looked into the future, Mister Barton. And do you want to know what the cards told me? The woman you loved, she killed you, twice. But with the last vestige of her sanity, she gave you a gift: a second chance. And she gave a gift to this broken city, too – you.”

The newspaper burned bright hot in Clint’s hand. 

“They’ll fail. They’ll barely escape with their lives. A great responsibility falls to you, Clint Barton. Even if you don’t want to. Find those who allied themselves with the Green Arrow, and join them. Be the hero this world need – be the hero you’ve always been meant to be.”

The fog raised yet again, enveloping everything and everyone, hiding the woman to his sight. He run toward her, tried to reach for her, but Clint met only emptiness wherever his hands touched, and then… then, he saw _light,_ and he was in the middle of a park, and a starry sky was on top of him. Everything was quiet, only the crickets’ song filled the air, and Clint wondered if it hadn’t been all a dream. 

He took a step back, and tripped over something, falling on his backside – a box. He opened it up, not tentatively, but knowing all too well what he was doing, as he was finally facing his destiny, and there’s a bow, arrows and a costume inside. 

It's forest green. 


End file.
